Highlands - Uncharted Territory (finally for 1.8.9!)

Highlands aims to be a comprehensive improvement of Minecraft biomes, trees, and terrain. If you've ever felt bored exploring the world of Minecraft, this is your mod. In 1.8, Highlands is going into uncharted territory, where no biome mod has gone before. It's been designed from the ground up with features from the old Highlands as well as brand new biomes and trees. Highlands also gives you an incentive to explore into uncharted territory, whether to search for the perfect mountain to build a base on, to complete your botanical garden, or to search for more lucrative mining opportunities.

Features:

18 new biomes!
8 trees, all with their own wood, leaves and planks!
6 small plants!
Custom world type and mountain generation!
Fully compatible with customized world settings!
Settings to disable biomes you don't want!
Biome rarity fix!
Ore generation changes per biome!
Forest generation based on height!
Improvements to vanilla biomes!

Highlands 3.1.0 for Minecraft 1.8.9 available for download! Fixes the bugs with leaf decay, thornbushes, and ocean temples. Now on Github with 99% fewer ads! Make sure to download highlands-3.1.0.jar.

Aspen - A medium tree with light colored wood and autumn leaves.
Bamboo - A small tree with a very thin stem.
Eucalyptus - a tall straight tree that grows in the tropics.
Fir - A tall thin pine tree with dark wood.
Palm - A tropical palm tree.
Poplar - A small tree that grows straight and thin.
Redwood - A giant redwood tree that can grow to be more than 40 blocks tall.
Dead - An oak tree that has lost all of its leaves.
Great Oak - Oak trees can grow much more massive in the forests of Highlands.
Shrubs - pine and oak shrubs that grow low to the ground.

Q: How do I use the new world type?
A: There are two world types, called Highlands and Highlands LB (Large Biomes), located in More World Options. To use them on a server, type the name in all capital letters in the world type field of the settings. HIGHLANDS or HIGHLANDS LB

Q: Which biome has more diamonds (or iron, or gold...)?
A: The additional ore is at least sort of realistic, try looking in biomes similar to where the ore is found in real life. Of course, for redstone you're on your own...

Q: How do I install this?
A: Like any other Forge mod, just put it in the "mods" folder. You need Forge installed first.

Q: Where are the settings?
A: Highlands.cfg located in the "config" folder.

Q: Can you disable spawning of vanilla biomes, or disable Highlands biomes in vanilla worlds?
A: Sadly not yet. That feature will get updated to 1.8 soon.

Q: Why don't some recipes work?
A: Recipes are unfinished, sorry. Plants don't drop items directly but can be crafted into them, in some cases. Berries are not updated yet. Wooden blocks use oak stairs and slabs as a placeholder for now.

Technical stuff:

Source code, if you want to take a look, is on Github here: https://github.com/sdj64/Highlands
Highlands is licensed using a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. That means you can modify it for your own use or to share with other people, but only if you credit the original author (sdj64) and share it with the same license.
You are free to use Highlands in modpacks, but please provide a link back here to this thread. You probably don't want to put it in a modpack yet since updates will be coming frequently to fix problems and provide new features.

Yes, use the Highlands LB world type. You can also change the biome sizes (default is 4 for regular, 6 for large biomes) in the config file. Biome size 5 is really nice but if you love love love giant biomes, you can go with 7 or higher. Each +1 doubles biome size.

Better river generation. Right now most rivers generate at sea level. I'd like to see rivers that start out in mountains and flow down the sides of mountains into tributaries and finally into massive rivers that pour out into the larger oceans and lakes. I'd like to also see headwaters, white waters and waves in the water. All of this should be configurable eventually so as to deactivate features that might bog down a smp server or personal computer while in ssp. In the case of rivers, I'd like to see the water flowing in the direction that leads to whatever the river is feeding or rather away from its source. With such a river I should be able to craft any water worthy vehicle from any mod and start at the source of the river and by predominant river flow alone make it through much of rivers distance assisted by nothing more than the rivers own current.

I'll understand if you need to back burner or not even attempt such a request.

I understand this is just an alpha release so things may change but nonetheless I'll start working on 32x Dokucraft textures for Highlands as soon as I can, since there are new trees and planks. For now it's time to have some fun exploring the world!

There is just a thing I'd like to talk about, as it's been an issue with many mods these past months when it comes to compatibility and I don't know if it will concern HL but it may interest you:

Some mods, most notably Enhanced Biomes, that gardening mod with the pots whose name escapes me and more recently BoP are using new kind of dirts. Which means that if a mod adds trees and plants, as far as I understand, there are two ways to check if they can be planted. The first one, that ensures compatibility with everything, is to check if the block below is a block capable of supporting plants. The second one, that the majority of mods do, is to check if the block below is vanilla dirt, which leads to trees unable to be planted/generate on modded dirt and crops unable to be planted/grow on modded tiled soil. At least that's what I get from all the discussions.

As you have trees and plants in highlands, and I'm pretty sure the previous versions of the mod had that issue with modded dirt, I thought it could interest you to know about it. If it happens that it was relevant then I can get better concrete info on how to resolve the issue, if you wish.

Thanks for your hard work.

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My small gallery, including some work I'm doing on Mod Support for the Dokucraft Textures Pack.

Thanks for the suggestions, all. That video is great, thanks for the review!

For more items, I might add some exploration focused items and equipment and of course berries and other items that can be crafted from the plants.

Rivers will be difficult, I looked at them specifically trying to make them wider so there was at least some water when a river generates between two tall mountain biomes. I might be able to add rapids with flowing water but specifically one-way currents will be difficult to start from scratch on and I have other things that I would rather do first. I could give the streams and rivers mod developer a call.

Thanks for the suggestion with supporting plants, it was an easy fix in the code and it will be in the next updated version. If you know of a specific mod for 1.8 that had this issue with the current Highlands I would be happy to download it and test to make sure it's fixed for the next release.

The leaves on the trees don't seem to despawn at all after the trees are cut down(as far as poplar trees are concerned). You can't use the logs for firewood or to turn wood into charcoal. There is no way yet to turn modded tree's planks into stairs or halfslabs. Is there a way to fix that? Also, can this mod be compatible with Worms mod so that I'd be able to get grubs from those trees as well? I've already asked the mod creator of Worms mod the same question just to make sure I cover all the bases.

I am a 1.8 Minecraft enthusiast. If i give any ideas to you for your mod that you like or even if I just came to say I like this mod, that basically means I would like this mod for 1.8.

I have ASD. I will most likely speak in a way that could offend people, that's the way I've always been (socially awkward), however, I do not mean to be offensive to anyone. Tactfulness has never been one of my strong suits. So, if your going to hate me...then don't bother talking to me as you will just waste my time and yours as well.

Despite what you're thinking the age in my profile is the actual true age. I find it amazing how many people think that ten is my actual age.

- First a small bug report, when planted by the player, trees will start loosing their leaves the moment they grows (pretty dramatic results for Palm trees).

- Regarding mountains, while at first I found them pretty interesting, I quickly became overwhelmed by their huge size. There are a lot of these biomes, and they are very very tall, like if they weren't really moderately sized mountains but they immediately start going for the sky instead. IMO it makes the biomes less beautiful to the eye.

The old Alps for example were full of Fir trees and shrubs, while the new ones look like the old Snow Mountains, with rare trees trying to grow where they can. Grey Mountains, Pinelands (thought it may be due to the proximity of other tall biomes) or Adirondacks rise so suddenly toward 256 that these biomes main feature feel like the giant cliff wall.

I like the idea of gigantic mountains as I'm sure many other players do, but do you think it could be possible to tone down the extreme world generation a little so that they are a rare occurrence, and that more biomes use instead less extreme generation (I think the Tropical Hills/Poplar Hills use the kind of generation I'm talking about)?

That was just my opinion of course. Keep up the good work!

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My small gallery, including some work I'm doing on Mod Support for the Dokucraft Textures Pack.

The leaves on the trees don't seem to despawn at all after the trees are cut down(as far as poplar trees are concerned). You can't use the logs for firewood or to turn wood into charcoal. There is no way yet to turn modded tree's planks into stairs or halfslabs. Is there a way to fix that? Also, can this mod be compatible with Worms mod so that I'd be able to get grubs from those trees as well? I've already asked the mod creator of Worms mod the same question just to make sure I cover all the bases.

I thought I fixed that problem with the leaves. I'll test again more thoroughly. Wooden stuff like stairs, slabs, and fences are coming. Sorry, I forgot the furnace recipes in this version, they will be there in the next release. Worms mod looks like it updated yesterday to include compatiblity, so you're in luck.

- First a small bug report, when planted by the player, trees will start loosing their leaves the moment they grows (pretty dramatic results for Palm trees).

- Regarding mountains, while at first I found them pretty interesting, I quickly became overwhelmed by their huge size. There are a lot of these biomes, and they are very very tall, like if they weren't really moderately sized mountains but they immediately start going for the sky instead. IMO it makes the biomes less beautiful to the eye.

The old Alps for example were full of Fir trees and shrubs, while the new ones look like the old Snow Mountains, with rare trees trying to grow where they can. Grey Mountains, Pinelands (thought it may be due to the proximity of other tall biomes) or Adirondacks rise so suddenly toward 256 that these biomes main feature feel like the giant cliff wall.

I like the idea of gigantic mountains as I'm sure many other players do, but do you think it could be possible to tone down the extreme world generation a little so that they are a rare occurrence, and that more biomes use instead less extreme generation (I think the Tropical Hills/Poplar Hills use the kind of generation I'm talking about)?

That was just my opinion of course. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, I want to tone down the cliffs too. I'm still fiddling with the settings in the Highlands world type to find the best balance of flat enough to navigate in Survival, but realistic-ish looking tall mountains still exist. I will introduce foothills biomes that generate lower and hopefully blend the transition for super tall mountain biomes.

I thought I fixed that problem with the leaves. I'll test again more thoroughly. Wooden stuff like stairs, slabs, and fences are coming. Sorry, I forgot the furnace recipes in this version, they will be there in the next release. Worms mod looks like it updated yesterday to include compatiblity, so you're in luck.

Thanks for the response. I really appreciate it. So those items I was talking about won't be implemented just yet but will be coming soon. Ah, no wonder logs didn't burn in furnaces. Well, at least you are working on it. Yeah I got the notification about 2 days ago that worms mod updated thanks for that. Take your time then. Also, there is a bug where when if I die after sleeping in a bed I spawn back at my original spawn point and not next to the bed.

I am a 1.8 Minecraft enthusiast. If i give any ideas to you for your mod that you like or even if I just came to say I like this mod, that basically means I would like this mod for 1.8.

I have ASD. I will most likely speak in a way that could offend people, that's the way I've always been (socially awkward), however, I do not mean to be offensive to anyone. Tactfulness has never been one of my strong suits. So, if your going to hate me...then don't bother talking to me as you will just waste my time and yours as well.

Despite what you're thinking the age in my profile is the actual true age. I find it amazing how many people think that ten is my actual age.

I don't know, what's up with them? Are the textures switched? Or are you confused that you didn't get berries out of them? Soon there will be a recipe to craft berry bushes into berries.

Why not make a way to grow berry bushes and have the berries become harvestable once ripe. Also, you'll be able to knock the berry bushes down and set them up near your base for easy food gathering. Is that not possible atm or has that already been implemented? I know in Natura they had that ability similar to ore-berry bushes from tinkers construct. Not really sure if that is what you had in mind...

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I am a 1.8 Minecraft enthusiast. If i give any ideas to you for your mod that you like or even if I just came to say I like this mod, that basically means I would like this mod for 1.8.

I have ASD. I will most likely speak in a way that could offend people, that's the way I've always been (socially awkward), however, I do not mean to be offensive to anyone. Tactfulness has never been one of my strong suits. So, if your going to hate me...then don't bother talking to me as you will just waste my time and yours as well.

Despite what you're thinking the age in my profile is the actual true age. I find it amazing how many people think that ten is my actual age.

I thought I fixed that problem with the leaves. I'll test again more thoroughly. Wooden stuff like stairs, slabs, and fences are coming. Sorry, I forgot the furnace recipes in this version, they will be there in the next release. Worms mod looks like it updated yesterday to include compatiblity, so you're in luck.

Yeah, I want to tone down the cliffs too. I'm still fiddling with the settings in the Highlands world type to find the best balance of flat enough to navigate in Survival, but realistic-ish looking tall mountains still exist. I will introduce foothills biomes that generate lower and hopefully blend the transition for super tall mountain biomes.

I don't know, what's up with them? Are the textures switched? Or are you confused that you didn't get berries out of them? Soon there will be a recipe to craft berry bushes into berries.

Wood now correctly smelts into charcoal. Wooden stuff burns in a furnace for the correct amount of time.

Planks craft into oak stairs and slabs (placeholder until they get their own stairs and slabs)

Change to mountain generation - different chunk generator parameters and foothills biomes to smooth the transition to tall mountains.

Tall mountain biomes lowered slightly

Regular Taiga now has rare mega trees instead of really common mega trees.

Highlands plants and saplings use CanSustainPlant instead of checking for dirt specifically, should work with modded dirt.

New stuff:

Dunes biome and Dune Grass plant

Mountain foothills

Outstanding bugs:

I couldn't reproduce the leaf decay bug, and leaf decay works fine for me in testing. Let me know if it's still broken for you. If it is broken, look at a leaf with F3 open and see if it says "check-decay = false" or "decayable = false". These should both be true.

Rivers are still annoyingly narrow, rapids not added yet.

Please post what you think about the new mountains. Are they better or worse than the last version?